Hi All - curious to groups thoughts on the evolving nature of consumers sharing their online banking credentials with others for screen scraping activities - in exchange for being offered alternative financial services, quickly onboarding at another FI, etc. Citbank has announced their new digital strategy for consumer banking and it includes the tools for those not banking with Citi to share their primary "bank" data with Citi for special offers and accelerating new account opening. My company, AccountScore, has been active doing this for online lending clients, FinTechs and financial technolgy providers for years, but now it seems mainstream banks are going to be accessing each others online banking data via consumer consent, which really makes for a unique Open Banking environment. Citi alone has over 120 million cardholders who could potentially share their credit union account transaction data to Citi for bank offers and digital banking solutions.

Donnie

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The practice of sharing online banking access seems to anticipate some of the “consumers-are-king” thinking that’s fueling initiatives like PSD2. I’d like to think that smart, progressive credit unions can win in that environment — to the extent that we might bring even more integrity and truer advocacy to members who are willing to share full financial pictures with us, even if they insist on having relationships with multiple FIs. It’s harder to picture folks freely sharing with banks if the result is even more financial manipulation and exploitation, especially if we provide a clear, high-value alternative.

The one thing I’ve pondered, though, for members who prefer to take our online banking data elsewhere is that we should support a regime where they can share it with some unique read-only login credentials to maximize security and silo fraud risk if it might arise from the third party. Otherwise, we’re confounded as to the source of fraud if it arises, to the extent that credentials are broadly shared. I'd hope this would become a common practice for all FIs, so that members could bring data to us with even greater confidence.

Beyond that, my own belief is that credit unions need to get busy (or even busier?), building and providing value-added services that help members manage their finances in grander schemes, given a reality where key accounts might be ours, and they might not. Our ability to be genuine advocates, with real 360-degree views, will be sorely hampered if we can’t.

If we have good fintech partners to facilitate that ambition, all the better. :-)

Dale, agreed about the regime where consumers can share securely and where all is transparent with regard to who is accessing and for what purposes. Our consents.online solution, a designated Account Information Service Provider (AISP), addresses this in the UK. Any party that wants to access banking data must use an AISP for access - consents.online provides the secruity and transparency for all parties. We are now serving HSBC - their customers/prospects who want to share their data from another bank must use consents.online to do so - like a Lloyds customer shoping for a loan or account at HSBC can share their Llyods account data with HSBC via consents.online and APIs - open banking framework. The consumer can also revoke consent later via the mobile app if and when they find themselves feeling manipulated or exposed. Not sure how this can be duplicated in US for CUs, though - perhaps the regime can be on a limited scale at core processor level? Been thinking on this for some time.

Thanks for the good thoughts!! Genuine advocates for members no matter where their key accounts are located at the moment, and if they are at the CU, then certainly much easier to unlock value-added insights from the data.